Notes for Shakespeare's Sonnet 9


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Shakespeare's
Sonnet
9

1. wet a widow's eye: i.e., die and leave behind a weeping widow.

3. issueless shalt hap to die: happen to die childless.

4. makeless: mateless, widowed.

5. The world be: the world will be.  still: always.

7. private: individual.

9-10. Look what all unthrift in the world doth spend / Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it: whatever unthriftiness spends in this world only changes places, and the world always makes use of it.  —In other words, the world's goods can't be totally wasted, because even when a spendthrift throws away his money, someone else gets it and uses it. This assertion is a set-up for what the poet says next, which is that if an individual's beauty is not passed on to children, it is totally wasted.

10. his: its.

11. beauty's waste hath in the world an end: wasted beauty comes to an end in this world.

12. the user: i.e. the one who had it to use.

14. murd'rous shame: shameful act of murder.